Administration would prefer you forget about Benghazi attack

Excellent article by Stephen Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn in the Weekly Standard that addresses the question: Why has the Obama administration failed to make any progress in the investigation into the attack on our diplomats in Benghazi on September 11?

More worryingly, our lack of progress has emboldened jihadists and makes us look enfeebled:

The second part of Clinton's comment generated little interest. Her vow to bring to justice the perpetrators of the attacks was the kind of perfunctory promise we expect to hear from any politician after any attack, particularly one so brazen. Of course it would be a top priority of the Obama administration and its lead diplomat to understand the attacks and punish those who committed them.

Yet four months later, Clinton's promise is notable precisely because it has gone unfulfilled. No one has been "brought to justice"-a fact that seems unlikely to change anytime soon. "We're not even close," says one U.S. official involved in the investigation.

And jihadists in the region, no doubt emboldened by the lack of U.S. response to the attacks, have taken to taunting the American investigators and celebrating U.S. feebleness. Washington has very little to show for its investigation of the Ben-ghazi attacks. One leading suspect is in custody-Egyptian custody-and we're being denied access to him. Another sipped a strawberry frappe in the lobby of a luxury hotel in Benghazi as he told a New York Times reporter that he felt no need to hide from the United States. And when a third suspect was freed from a Tunisian prison earlier this month, the U.S. government was given no warning, but extremists belonging to an al Qaeda-linked group apparently had advance notice.

If there is any urgency to the U.S. government's efforts to "bring to justice" the terrorists, it's well hidden. It took the FBI team assigned to investigate Benghazi nearly a month to arrive there. Later, after they had supposedly scoured the U.S. consulate, on two separate occasions reporters found highly sensitive documents on the floor-some including the names of Libyans working with the U.S. government. Robert Mueller, the head of the FBI, visited Libya as part of the investigation for the first time last week.

The Standard article goes on to give a great amount of detail about our dealings with the government of Tunisia, who had arrested a suspect in the Benghazi attack. Denied access to him for weeks, the FBI finally got a 3 hour interview with him in late December. After that, the Tunisian government promptly released him and he rejoined his jihadist friends.

I can't help thinking of the investigation into the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia that followed a similar pattern. Our lack of response there was a factor that led to the 9/11/01 attacks, according to the Commission.

Let's hope history doesn't repeat itself.

Excellent article by Stephen Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn in the Weekly Standard that addresses the question: Why has the Obama administration failed to make any progress in the investigation into the attack on our diplomats in Benghazi on September 11?

More worryingly, our lack of progress has emboldened jihadists and makes us look enfeebled:

The second part of Clinton's comment generated little interest. Her vow to bring to justice the perpetrators of the attacks was the kind of perfunctory promise we expect to hear from any politician after any attack, particularly one so brazen. Of course it would be a top priority of the Obama administration and its lead diplomat to understand the attacks and punish those who committed them.

Yet four months later, Clinton's promise is notable precisely because it has gone unfulfilled. No one has been "brought to justice"-a fact that seems unlikely to change anytime soon. "We're not even close," says one U.S. official involved in the investigation.

And jihadists in the region, no doubt emboldened by the lack of U.S. response to the attacks, have taken to taunting the American investigators and celebrating U.S. feebleness. Washington has very little to show for its investigation of the Ben-ghazi attacks. One leading suspect is in custody-Egyptian custody-and we're being denied access to him. Another sipped a strawberry frappe in the lobby of a luxury hotel in Benghazi as he told a New York Times reporter that he felt no need to hide from the United States. And when a third suspect was freed from a Tunisian prison earlier this month, the U.S. government was given no warning, but extremists belonging to an al Qaeda-linked group apparently had advance notice.

If there is any urgency to the U.S. government's efforts to "bring to justice" the terrorists, it's well hidden. It took the FBI team assigned to investigate Benghazi nearly a month to arrive there. Later, after they had supposedly scoured the U.S. consulate, on two separate occasions reporters found highly sensitive documents on the floor-some including the names of Libyans working with the U.S. government. Robert Mueller, the head of the FBI, visited Libya as part of the investigation for the first time last week.

The Standard article goes on to give a great amount of detail about our dealings with the government of Tunisia, who had arrested a suspect in the Benghazi attack. Denied access to him for weeks, the FBI finally got a 3 hour interview with him in late December. After that, the Tunisian government promptly released him and he rejoined his jihadist friends.

I can't help thinking of the investigation into the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia that followed a similar pattern. Our lack of response there was a factor that led to the 9/11/01 attacks, according to the Commission.